May 19 (Bloomberg) -- SAC Capital Management LLC, the $14
billion investment firm founded by Steve Cohen, is opening a
fund specializing in quantitative trading, its first new fund in
six years, according to two people familiar with the decision.

The hedge fund will be managed by SAC’s 20 teams of so-called quant traders, who buy and sell stocks based on signals
from computer models, said the people, who asked not to be
identified because the Stamford, Connecticut-based firm is
private. Current investors asked SAC to open the fund, which
will launch in the third quarter, the people said. Quantitative
investing makes up about 15 percent of the roughly $35 billion,
including leverage, that the firm manages.

“Some investors want quantitative funds because they are
very liquid and a good diversification from fundamental long-short equity,” said Larry Chiarello, a partner at SkyView
Investment Advisors LLC in Shrewsbury, New Jersey, which places
money with hedge funds.

SAC, which has attracted about $1.5 billion into its main
fund since mid-2010, told clients last week that it is
considering closing that fund to new investments to ensure that
returns remain high. Cohen, who has averaged gains of 30 percent
a year, kept the fund closed for its first 13 years.

“You start with $23 million -- if you asked me if we were
going to get to $100 million, I would have been surprised,”
Cohen, 54, said last week during an interview at SkyBridge
Capital LLC’s hedge-fund conference in Las Vegas.

Winding Down Fund

Jonathan Gasthalter, a spokesman for SAC Capital, declined
to comment.

SAC opened a multistrategy fund in 2005 that offered
clients a range of strategies beyond equities, including fixed-income, private-equity and macro investments. In exchange for an
initial three-year lock-up, investors were charged 3 percent of
assets and 35 percent of gains, compared with 3 percent and 50
percent for the main fund. Cohen is winding down that fund after
many of the strategies lost money in 2008, according to two
people familiar with the decision.

The main fund climbed 8 percent this year through April,
compared with a 5.7 percent increase for Bloomberg’s Long/Short
Equity hedge fund index.